Grand Teton has no foothills. Most ranges climb through a long swell of hills. The Tetons break straight out of the flat floor of Jackson Hole in a single wall, the highest summit standing nearly 2,100 metres above the sagebrush at its base. You can stand in the valley and see the whole range at once, top to bottom, with nothing in the way. It is a line of granite spires cut by glaciers into a saw-toothed skyline, crowned by the 4,199-metre Grand Teton. This is the youngest range in the Rocky Mountains, lifted along a fault over the past several million years — too fast and too recently to have softened into foothills. The rock itself carries the opposite story: some of it is gneiss close to 2.7 billion years old, among the oldest in North America. String, Jenny and Jackson lakes lie along the base, dropped by glaciers that came down the canyons.
Most people meet the range at dawn along the Snake River. At Oxbow Bend and Schwabacher Landing the water lies still enough to hold a full reflection while first light turns the east faces rose and copper. The mirror holds only until the first breeze, so the earliest arrivals get it and everyone else gets ripples. Downvalley, the weathered barns of Mormon Row stand tiny against the granite, left by homesteaders who tried to farm this hard ground. In autumn the aspens flare gold against grey stone. Elk, bison and moose graze the meadows, and grizzlies work the slopes above, so people carry bear spray on the trails. Summer paths climb from the lake shores into deep glacial canyons — Cascade Canyon from Jenny Lake is the one most walkers take. The park begins minutes from the town of Jackson, which is unusual for wilderness this raw.